Assessment of the elastic load-bearing capacity of flexible road pavements

The paper presents a concept for assessing the elastic load-bearing capacity of flexible road pavements using soil mechanics failure hypotheses. In the examples, a typical pavement model in the form of a system of isotropic elastic layers was adopted. The top layer is loaded with surface forces uniformly distributed over a circular area. Two methods for solving the boundary value problem were applied: an analytical-numerical method, which results from the use of stress functions and numerical integration of special functions, and a numerical method, where the finite element method and software were used. The results of solving boundary value problems of elasticity, in which models of appropriately connected isotropic layered systems are assumed (cf. [3,6,11] and the literature cited therein), are often used in the design of flexible road pavements, including flexible, semi-rigid, and rigid ones [2,5,10,11]. Selected values of extreme stresses and strains (or their equivalent values) are compared with appropriate empirical formulas, which, in short, take into account “all factors” causing degradation and destruction of a road structure cyclically loaded by vehicle traffic. The detailed procedure recommended for use in Poland is described, for example, in the Catalogue [10] and in many monographs, cf. e.g. [5,11]. (…)

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